Archive for the 'Russia' Category

Obama was elected – twice – as a left-wing, Democratic and progressive President promising less involvement in world conflicts, more dialogue with enemies, and fewer American troops deployed. Obama says that he wants a diminished emphasis on American strength. These “progressive” tactics were supposed to make the world more peaceful. The absence of American involvement is now creating a vacuum that is being filled by dictators. In reality, what has resulted is a much more dangerous world at war. The President was supposed to mollify and reassure with his non-interventionist policies and actions but it has been a dismal failure.

What concerns me most is his inability to admit failure. Instead, he steps on the accelerator even after losing Congressional elections. His tactics are fueling more war and potential nuclear conflagration. He and his administration seem to have a willful blindness and complete misunderstanding of the differences between various countries and the ideologies that drive them.

The Obama administration has taken the concept of equality and stretched and distorted it into a belief that the worst state and non-state actors behave just like America. The administration has complete confidence in its own failed strategies despite proof that they are leading the world into more death and danger.

1.Will Bashar al-Asad comply with the demands of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or not? And what will or could the Obama administration do when Asad will not comply?

Although initial reports indicated that Bashshar al-Assad is complying with OPCW demands, I would be surprised if he continues with this because the chemical weapons are crucial to his maintaining power. I expect the Obama administration to attack Syrian government installations without expecting or even wanting this to make much difference in the course of the civil war.

2.Does the U.S. – Russian agreement solve the crisis in Syria or not?

Not at all; it only deals with chemical weapons, not the much larger question of the civil war. Put in numbers: the chemical weapons accounts for just 1 percent of the civil war fatalities until now.

This is the speech that Obama ought to make to Israelis during his visit to their country:

Prime Minister Netanyahu, Knesset members, the people of Israel and the Jewish people worldwide: It is an honor and privilege to be here today in Jerusalem, Israel, the undivided capital of Israel and the land of the Jewish people from the time before the establishment of the first temple of Solomon, destroyed by the Babylonians, followed by the second temple which Antiochus desecrated, Pompey looted and the Romans destroyed during the Siege of Jerusalem. Throughout history invaders and superpowers have attempted to extinguish the Jewish people and their symbols. Today is no different as we have an empire of Islamists using whatever means they can to wipe out all traces of Israel and Judaism. They too will not succeed.

Waves of Islamic fundamentalism have engulfed Russia; the Kremlin continues to woo the Islamists with Hamas among them

By Alexander Maistrovoy

Following prayers at the Moscow Cathedral Mosque, during his visit in February 2010, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal admitted that, in the Council of Muftis of Russia, it felt like home. While his statement probably pleased Russian leaders, in reality these words should have alerted them. Whether it was Mashaal’s intention or not, this acknowledgment could be perceived as a prophecy: The dawn of Islamic fundamentalism in the northern superpower.

Islam is the second religious denomination in Russia after the Orthodox Church. According to the official census, there are about 15 million Muslims — 10% of the population — in Russia. The Spiritual Board of Muslims claims 20 million. Most of these Muslims are concentrated in the North Caucasus (Chechens, Ingush people, etc.) and in the Volga region (Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash people, etc.). The natural growth of Muslims is traditionally higher than that of rest of the population.

Recent steps taken by the Government of Turkey suggest it may be ready to ditch the NATO club of democracies for a Russian and Chinese gang of authoritarian states.

Here is the evidence:

Starting in 2007, Ankara applied three times unsuccessfully to join as a Guest Member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (or SCO, informally known as the Shanghai Five). Founded in 1996 by the Russian and Chinese governments, along with three (and in 2001 a fourth) former Soviet Central Asian states, the SCO has received minimal attention in the West, although it has grand security and other aspirations, including the possible creation of a gas cartel. More, it offers an alternative to the Western model, from NATO, to democracy, to displacing the U.S. dollar as reserve currency. After those three rejections, Ankara applied for “Dialogue Partner” status in 2011. In June 2012, it won approval.

The world now depends on the free flow of information. What is about to happen at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from December 3-14 2012, will surely change the world in ways that most of us cannot imagine. Google is taking a lead in objecting to this massive invasion and grab for control over the now self-controlled Internet; the EU is none too happy either. Some national governments like China, Russia, and Middle Eastern countries, and certain power-hungry agencies such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) want to wrest control of the Internet for a range of very bad reasons. We must speak up to stop the erosion of freedom.

Twenty eight years of unilateral and multilateral US-led sanctions, accompanied by diplomatic pressure and cyber sabotage, have failed to deter Iran’s Ayatollahs from approaching nuclear capabilities.

Fifty years of proliferated sanctions — since the 1962 military coup in Burma — have been largely unsuccessful in changing policies of rogue regimes.

In fact, the US focus on sanctions and engagement — rather than confrontation — has facilitated Iran’s nuclear drive. It has provided Teheran with more time to develop and acquire critical nuclear capabilities.

Sanctions have effectively eroded Iran’s economy. Sanctions have been ineffective in diverting Iran from its nuclear path.

I would not have been asking for America to leave the Middle East two years ago. Yet with President Obama making things worse, siding with belligerents, making friends with U.S.- and Israel-hating enemies like the Muslim Brotherhood, allowing nukes to be developed by Iran as his administration ties Israel’s hands to prevent a viable mission to stop Iran, I am now convinced that America must pull out completely.

While Israel’s economy is facing the consequences of the global economic meltdown (e.g., unemployment is rising at 7%, gasoline price is surging):

1. According to the August 24, 2012 “Commentator” article by Peter Glover and Michael Economides, “as the tension between Israel and Iran ratchets up, an interesting sub-text has developed over the role of Iran’s traditional backer, Russia… . 20 million metric tons of liquid natural gas (LNG) exported each year from the eastern Mediterranean into Europe [a reference to the supposed potential of Israel's and Cyprus' offshore natural gas reserves] would amount to about one third of current Russian exports… . Putin’s Kremlin is clearly rattled by the threat of decline for that which underpins Russia’s entire economy: its energy hegemony… . Russia supplies a quarter of all Europe’s (rising) natural gas demand… . But there is now a new kid on the block that could pose a very clear and present threat to Russia’s vital European market: Israel, along with Cyprus, and their upcoming potential status as gas exporting energy superpowers… . During Putin’s recent visit to Israel, he and Netanyahu agreed to form a junior company to [Russia's] Gazprom that would help develop Israel’s Leviathan gas field in the eastern Mediterranean… . Iran is suing Russia in the Court of Arbitration in Geneva for cancelling a contract to sell five divisions of the S-300 long-range anti-aircraft missile system… . the Kremlin appears to have higher economic and political priorities. Chief among them: ensuring its vast energy resources help it to remain a global superpower… ”

1. Frans Van Houten, the CEO of the Dutch giant, Philips Global: “Israel’s economic and organizational culture is consistent with Philips’ requirements… . Philips owes part of its enhanced performance (2nd quarter’s earnings — 17% above projections) to Israel’s excellent engineers in the imaging, data processing and data storage areas. Philips has expanded its Israeli presence and acquisitions since 1999, when it acquired part of Israel’s Elscint, then Israel’s CDP and CDC… . Philips will expand its current 600 employee research & development center…” (Globes Business Daily, Aug. 2, 2012).

The port of Oktyabrsk is situated on the left bank of the Bug River, 58 km. north of the entry to the Black Sea. Close to the city of Nikolayev, this anonymous Ukrainian port could not seem further from the strife-torn Middle East.

Yet in the last year, Oktyabrsk has played a key role in the international structure that enables the survival of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. It is the main point from which ships bearing the Russian arms that underwrite the Assad regime’s survival set off undisturbed on their journey to the Syrian coast.

Huge balls of fire and mushrooms of smoke seen on the latest videos from Homs indicate that the Syrian army is using more powerful weapons in its assault on the remaining rebel strongholds in the city.

This is what the daily shelling of Homs used to look like when the Baba Amro district was still under rebel control:

Hitler’s Nazi Germany signed a “non-aggression” agreement with Stalin’s USSR in 1939 (the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”). It meant nothing. It was a worthless peace of paper designed to ease the Nazi’s eventual conquest and extermination of all peoples in the Soviet sphere of influence: “Of the Soviet Union’s 190 million people, Hitler intended to kill 150 million and the rest would be made slaves for the invaders.” The Nazis did kill millions of Russians and Eastern Europeans. In the same way, Nazi Germany’s “alliance” with segments of the Arab/Muslim world was a short-term lie: The Germans considered North African Arab Semites to be sub-human inferiors whom I’m sure they would’ve eventually exterminated. As is so common in the current Arab/Muslim world, ignorance reigns, and Libyans don’t even know that Allied soldiers actually saved them from eventual extermination by defeating the Nazis in WWII’s north African theater. Libyan Islamists have ignorantly desecrated Allied soldiers’ tombs because of the silly, accidental Koran-burning incident in Afghanistan:

A furious mob has desecrated dozens of Commonwealth War Graves in a Libyan cemetery amid continuing fury in the Middle East over the burning of the Koran by U.S. soldiers.

Headstones commemorating British and Allied servicemen, killed during World War II campaigns in the Western Desert, lay smashed and strewn across Benghazi Military Cemetery. …

There is no “Arab Spring.” It is indeed an Arab winter in which hateful, violent Islamo-fascists are trying to take over the Middle East.